Public Relations
by Iellix
Summary: Alice has never been the type to delight in the idea of nearly getting caught. But Hatter's ruined her--oh, how he's ruined her. One-shot, lemon.


This whole story was written kind of spur-of-the-moment. I'm on medicine for a nasty cough and it's screwing with my sleep patterns. What better time to write than at 1am? In my head, Hatter seems like the type to get off on the idea of _almost_ getting caught, and Alice—well, you know what they say. It's always the ones you least suspect.

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it. I think that covers just about every permutation of a disclaimer.

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o…o

The first time Hatter tries it is at the karate school after-hours, while he's waiting for her to clean up and change so they can go back to her apartment. The school's owner is letting him wait inside the building because it's raining and cold outside. One minute she's fresh from the shower in the women's locker room and packing her uniform in her duffel bag, and the next she sees him sneaking in the door with a hand-in-the-cookie-jar look on his face.

"What are you—" she begins with her voice shrill and then lowers it to a harsh whisper when he puts a finger to his lips. "What are you _doing_ in here? This is the women's lockers!"

"I know."

"For all you know there could be other women in here—other black belts who can kill you with one finger!"

"There aren't, though," he says slyly. "It's just you."

Alice feels suddenly very self-conscious and wraps herself a little tighter in her towel, even though he's seen her in far less.

"Why?"

He gets a wicked smile on his face that makes an inexplicable illicit chill go up her spine.

And then he's in front of her and he crushes her into the wall behind her and kisses her _hard,_ and she kisses him right back just as fiercely, and it becomes a battle between them to see who can be roughest without actually breaking any bones.

The towel falls forgotten to the floor and she pulls his shirt and his waistcoat up while he struggles with his pants. She giggles when he gets flustered and unfastens the belt for him and she's vaguely surprised to notice that he hasn't worn underwear, possibly for this very reason. That wouldn't shock her. Even Hatter at his most shocking doesn't shock her, not anymore.

There are voices outside the door and her eyes go wide but he just smiles that lopsided, one-dimpled smile and puts a finger to his lips again, silently telling her to keep quiet, and she nods. He kisses her again but not nearly as hard this time, and he flicks his tongue over her lower lip, begging silently, and she opens her lips and lets him in. He drags his nails slowly down her back and her whole body comes out in goosebumps; he digs his nails into her thighs and she hisses softly, then bites his tongue.

One hand slips between them and between her legs and two nimble fingers stroke gently and she groans low in her throat, and then Hatter stops.

"Shh," he purrs in her ear, and he punctuates it with a kiss to the side of her neck, and all she can do in reply is nod dumbly—there are still voices outside, still people there who might hear them.

He slides his hands under her backside and lifts her up; her legs go around his hips and he enters her all in the same movement. She leans down to bite his neck and he growls and bites her breast right back—because nothing between Alice and Hatter would be complete without some kind of argument—and she almost can't keep quiet.

They've done this before, albeit never in these exact circumstances, but this is different. This time they're doing something they undeniably shouldn't. They could get caught—the people Alice works for and with are just beyond the door, someone could walk in at any time and catch them in the act, and it all just makes it _that much more exciting_ and _that much better_ because it's so illicit and deliciously against all the rules. She tries to keep as silent as possible but it's harder and harder for her to do.

He covers her mouth with his and the kiss is gentle, but still fervent, and he greedily swallows her quiet whimpers and mewls at every roll of his hips. She fists her hands in his hair. His hat falls off his head, unnoticed. He squashes her against the wall to hold her up so his hands are free to roam her body; one settles back between her legs and those oh-so-clever fingers find her clit and they neither of them last long after that.

She buries her face in his shoulder and this time _he's_ the one who can't stay silent and he growls and grunts into her neck. They still and stay there, locked onto each other, trying to catch their breath without making any noise. He lips her neck and she licks around the curve of his ear and when they feel like they can be steady again, he lets her down on the floor.

Then she gets dressed and packs the rest of her things in her bag as if nothing happened. If anyone else in the building has noticed or _guessed_ what they did, they're not letting on.

o…o

Alice and Hatter repeat the scene three more times at the school—twice after-hours and then once, brazenly, during the evening right after she teaches her adult class. The excitement and the thrill of _possibly_ getting caught, being so close between bliss and danger, make it exhilarating and intoxicating. And highly addictive.

They go at it in more places than just the ladies changing room at the school, and every time they get a little riskier, a little more public. Nowhere is deemed 'too risky' for them—not the back seat of her car in a dark abandoned parking lot, nor behind the stairs leading up to his apartment, nor the coffee shop and bookstore where Hatter is working. She happens to know for a fact when the security camera in one of the elevators in the building isn't working and they go there, too.

She's never thought of herself as the type to thrill in almost getting caught; she's always been too level-headed, too cautious. Not that stupid. After all, why in the world would she deliberately put herself in the position to get caught doing something she so clearly shouldn't have been doing? On her internal 'List of Things That Shouldn't be Done', she's pretty sure that 'fucking in public' is right up at the top of the list—lower than 'committing a felony' but somewhere above 'littering' and 'tripping small children'. Something, in short, she never thought she'd do, let alone _enjoy_ like this.

But Hatter's ruined her. Oh, how he's ruined her. It's just as often her idea now as his when they end up a tangle of arms and legs somewhere not-quite-private, and he always seems to find it that much sexier that not only could they be caught _in flagrante,_ but that it was her idea to do it that time.

They ambush each other; they lie in wait like jungle predators, waiting to pounce and do unspeakable things to each other with the rest of the world so close to catching them. They devise a system of coded actions so they can break away from groups and meet somewhere for something quick, quick while no one suspects a thing.

It turns into a game between them, to see if they can make the other crack in public while elbow-deep in each other's clothing. They both have rather excellent poker faces and they carry on in some startlingly inappropriate places—on buses, in movie theatres, in the queue at the DMV while waiting to get Hatter an ID made—but Alice almost always wins. It comes down to the simple fact that he has what he politely terms a 'damage radius', and she doesn't.

She sits close to him, practically on his lap, and dozes on his shoulder on the subway, half-asleep and half-awake and only vaguely aware of what's going on around her. Hatter is occupied with her digital camera, flicking through the pictures from the day out, or at least she _thinks_ he's occupied that way. Then she becomes very aware of what he's doing; she feels his hand go from its chaste position on her back around to the front under her coat—the brown-purple velvet one he gave her in Wonderland—and he traces little circles on her stomach under her shirt.

She cracks one eye and looks at him and he pauses; she smiles and he takes that as his cue to go on. His hand circles lower and lower, bringing her out in shivers. No one can see what he's doing under her coat and her clothes, but he's still doing it in front of no fewer than ten billion other people, smooching couples and blue-haired old ladies and annoying chatty teenagers and exhausted mothers with their squalling children, all crammed like sardines in the train car.

He doesn't look away from the camera in his hand; the trick for her is to keep a straight face while he's making her toes curl so no one will be the wiser. Anyone could look over, look right at her, and watch and still not know what's going on and that heightens the excitement and her pulse quickens. He's good with his hands—he would have to be, she figures, because he's too good with his hat tricks and too good at sleight-of-hand to have _no_ talent in this area—and it doesn't take him long to make her squirm under his fingers.

Sitting still is the hardest part, because nothing would give her away faster than if she started grinding her hips into his hand, so she sits and lets him work at his own pace, which is agonizingly slow.

But his fingers are nimble and Hatter is talented and her hips buck involuntarily ever so slightly, and he laughs so low and quiet that she can barely hear it. She shivers slightly as she comes back down to earth and he withdraws his hand. He kisses her forehead and then her lips.

"I'll get you back," she threatens.

"I'm counting on it."

o…o

Dinner out with Alice's mother and her mother's squawking sisters is neither her nor Hatter's idea of a fun evening, but Carol has decided independently that it's time that 'David' is introduced to some of the extended family. So they're more or less drafted into it and they think, well, it's just one dinner.

Since Alice doesn't see her mother's relatives very often, so in between she has a lot of time to forget about them. They're nice enough people, but they talk too much and tell all of those embarrassing childhood stories and family anecdotes, and with every passing minute Alice feels herself sliding further and further down in her chair.

They mean well, she reminds herself, but that hardly helps. They fawn over Hatter because of that delectable accent, and barrage him with questions about where he comes from and what he does and how long he and Alice have known each other and where they met and what their plans are and it starts to sound more like a police interrogation than a family dinner. And then it goes back to family stories again, which is far less pressuring but no more comforting.

Hatter seems as uncomfortable as she is, because her aunts can be intimidating and because he's trying to steer the conversation away from those embarrassing familial stories for her sake, but even the charming David Hatter is no match for those women. They are conversational tanks, running over and through any attempts to steer them elsewhere.

There's only so much of this she can take so she excuses herself to 'get some fresh air' because there's a couple a few tables down quietly chain-smoking, so she uses that for an excuse. Her mother and her aunts are animatedly involved in conversation and seem to have forgotten their reason for having dinner together, so they say nothing. As she passes behind Hatter, though, she tugs a lock of his hair at the back of his neck, their silent signal to wait a few minutes and follow. He turns and watches her walk away and he starts counting back from a hundred in his head.

"Pardon me," he excuses himself under the guise of a phone call, all sweetness and good manners and a disarming smile. "I've been expecting this call, it's important."

He walks off looking for Alice and she pulls him into the cloakroom as he passes, her hand in the collar of his shirt. She doesn't even give him time to react before she drags him down and kisses him fiercely and backs him into the far corner where they can't be seen from outside. There are a few curtained-off public telephone cubicles here and she pulls him into one and he closes the curtain. It's as private a place as they're likely to get; since the advent of mobile phones, almost no one uses public phones anymore and Alice is prepared to take full advantage of that.

The space is small and cramped but that's never stopped them before. People are coming into the cloakroom with coats and there are customers and wait staff outside going about their business, all the while Alice is going wrist-deep in Hatter's pants and he's caressing her breasts through her dress. The familiar tingle of illicit excitement fizzles in her stomach. This is foolish and dangerous and _illegal_ and there are people everywhere and they could be caught, and breaking the rules like this is so deliciously fun that she wants more, more, more.

She grabs the inside of his thigh and a rumble rolls up in his throat, a half-growl half-moan that makes her chest prickle. She giggles softly, quietly, into his ear and kisses his cheek. One hand is looped around the back of his neck and her other one quickly undoes his belt and slips under the waistband of his trousers. He gives a sharp intake of breath and she knows she's got him.

She is careful not to actually touch his erection and instead has a little fun teasing him. He whines and growls quietly in her ear, jerks his hips against her hand, breathes heavily. It's difficult to tell who's enjoying themselves more: her, or Hatter.

They're both having fun, she decides. He's gently kneading her breasts through the fabric of her dress and he's lipping her ears and her neck and it all but makes her purr.

Someone walks by the curtain on their way to another pay phone, and her heart pounds and blood rushes in her ears. So close to being caught! She feels him smile into her neck.

"Keep going," she urges in a nearly-inaudible whisper. He nods.

She's wearing her blue dress, the one she wore in Wonderland, and he quickly hikes it up around her waist and runs his hands up and down her bare skin. His hands are warm. He smells good, he _feels_ good. He tastes good, too, as she kisses his neck and pulls his shirt down in front so she can get at his chest. He leaves hot, wet open-mouthed kisses up her throat to her mouth and he kisses her deeply and eagerly and she immediately forgets what she was trying to do to him.

"Alice," he breathes.

His voice is thick and hot and his eyes are lusty and her breath catches in her throat. He hooks his hands into the waist of her panties but he doesn't move them. She groans in anticipation, louder than she realizes, and he stops and shakes his head.

"I know," she growls at him, frustrated, before he can say anything. "Quiet."

"Mm," he murmurs. "Good."

He takes her wrists and backs her up two steps so her back is pressed against the opposite wall of the cubicle and he pins her wrists up over her head with one hand. She looks up at them pinned there, as if they're some kind of novelty, and then looks back at him and a little smile of her own curls up her lips. She can break out of his hold at any time if she wants to and he knows this; that she doesn't make any move to do so is his invitation to go on.

Rather than go ahead, he leans in and nuzzles her cheek and kisses her slow and soft and sweet, in contrast to their rough and manic fumbling just seconds ago. It makes her sigh happily, forgetting for a split second that they're standing up and fully clothed in a public phone in the cloakroom of a restaurant.

Hatter understands what it means, that she doesn't even try to free her hands. She trusts him, and trusts him completely, enough to let herself be powerless and pinned to the wall behind her. He knows this, and he doesn't take it for granted. The exchange is silent and coded but obvious to them, and only them.

_I trust you, completely._

_I know, and I'll never give you reason not to._

They're wasting valuable time so Alice playfully nips his lip and wriggles under him and they immediately go back to the task at hand.

His free hand goes between her thighs, his palm grinds against her sex. She shivers and rolls her hips into his hand and it sends jolts of pleasure through her. She's wet all the way through the flimsy fabric, she can feel it; he doesn't even bother taking her panties off, he just pushes the gusset aside and lets his fingers roam.

She's panting and her chest is heaving and his mouth is all over her neck and his touch makes her feel like she's going to melt into a puddle and he's barely even started yet.

"Too good…"

"I can do better," he says. Before she can ask what, exactly, he plans on doing, he's let go of her hands and is on her knees in front of her. He looks up at her with a sly, cheeky look and that one-dimpled grin and she nearly comes right there.

He grasps her hip in his left hand and shrugs her left leg over his shoulder, where he holds it with his other hand. He kisses the inside of her thigh, little ticklish kisses further and further up and closer and closer. She starts to shiver but she doesn't dare move or make any noise for fear he'll stop. Instead she knots her hands in his already-messy hair and lets her head loll back against the wooden divide behind her.

Hatter darts his tongue out over her clothed sex and her heart almost stops beating. He moves the fabric to one side and licks slowly and it feels like his tongue is burning her flesh. All that escapes her is a wordless gurgle and he clearly likes this reaction because he tries to elicit it a second time, and Alice quietly dissolves into incoherency. She can't think or speak or _anything._

He's wanton and rough and he devours her greedily and Alice quickly comes once, and then twice, all in silence so no one discovers them. She grasps fistfuls of his hair and holds on as if her life depends on it. Her legs go weak and watery and she starts to tremble.

He bites inside her thigh, a little jolt of pain through the pleasurable haze, and then he kisses over the bite to soothe it away. The mix makes her head spin.

"Hatter…" she intends it as a whisper but it comes out as a growl.

He stops and looks up at her, big dark eyes and single dimple and comically disarranged hair, and he licks his lips slowly and that alone almost makes her come undone.

She pulls him to his feet by his shirt collar and when he's close enough she kisses him hard and frantic and breathless. She can taste herself on him. It's strange, but just turns her on even more. He grinds his hips into hers and she can feel him, hard, through his clothes. They only have a few minutes they can be missing before someone will catch on…

Neither of them is thinking straight when they deem it a risk worth taking. There are still people coming into and out of the cloakroom and she isn't sure that there aren't any cameras in here—no matter, anyway. Whoever is in charge of them tonight is going to get quite a show.

Hatter's trousers come down just enough and he pulls her up and wraps her around his waist; she's slick and offers no resistance. They're squashed together, hips to hips and chest to chest, smothering themselves in each other's necks and shoulders.

Already wound up, she shudders her way to her third orgasm of the evening and grasps him with her arms and legs like she's afraid she'll melt and slide right off of him. He breathes heavy and pants into her shoulder and she feels him quake and dig his nails into her hips and slumps forward, and they stay locked together in silence to catch their breath.

He lets her down and they put all their clothes back into place. She stands a little taller and gives him a quick peck on the lips; he follows her with another kiss when she backs up.

The curtain to the cubicle opens and a grouchy old prune of a man is standing there scowling at them for daring to make out in a phone booth.

"Ex-_cuse_ you, young people!" He huffs at them.

"D'you mind?" Hatter asks, feigning indignant. "This is a private meeting."

"This is neither the time nor the place for that kind of carrying-on," the man tells them. "The world is not your little love-nest."

Alice tries hard not to giggle, given what they were just doing.

"C'mon, let's go," she says, tugging Hatter's hand and leading him out of the cubicle.

The idea of going back to the table to finish out the evening appeals to neither of them, so they grab their coats and slip away and damned be the consequences. She'll think of some kind of excuse for her mother in the morning.

They keep their hands to themselves on the train and in the stairs and on the elevator in Hatter's building and the second the door to his apartment is closed and locked, the hands come out and clothes slide off.

Here there's no chance that anyone will walk in on them here, no illicit thrill of maybe getting caught. They're not breaking any rules or doing anything they shouldn't be.

But she has Hatter and that's plenty exciting for her.

o…o

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Okay, that turned out a little longer and… pornier?… than I'd originally planned it to be. I felt like writing something a little smutty and pointless. Just because. I hope you enjoyed. Feedback is always muchly appreciated, but, of course, never demanded.


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